Energy policy expert Lisa Margonelli is the author of a book about the oil supply chain, "Oil On the Brain: Petroleum’s Long Strange Trip to Your Tank." In this interview, Need to Know's Alison Stewart speaks to Margonelli about U.S. energy policy in the wake of the BP spill. "The oil problem is so huge and so multi-tentacled and so involved in our lives," said Margonelli. "People are hungering for sort of bigger, more technological fixes… But I think we’ve overlooked the social engineering. Which is that we can really change our behaviors quite quickly – and we often times do change our behaviors."

In the shadow of the recession, a great migration of sorts has occurred in the suburbs. Though, since the rows of houses were first built outside America's city limits, this population turnover has been a long time coming.
A Brookings Institution preview of the 2010 Census released last year shows that the nuclear family out in suburbia with its kids and white-picket fences and two-car garages has been a misscharacterization for at least the last decade, if not longer. Racial and ethnic minorities now account for a majority of the population in 17 metropolitan areas, most in the South and Southwest, but regions like New York in the Northeast will soon follow. Also, since 2000, the number of 55to 64 year olds nationwide grew by nearly 50 percent. This past January, the first baby boomers turned 65.
Brookings demographer William H. Frey talks to Blueprint America about his findings, and what all of it means to a new kind of suburbia.

America is on the brink of a massive demographic shift as the first of the baby boom turned 65 this New Year. Already, an estimated 39 million people across the country are 65 or older -- just over 13 percent of the population. By 2030, when all baby boomers will be over 65, there will be 72 million seniors -- about 20 percent of the population. And our suburbs -- where half of all Americans live today -- will be hardest hit.
Elinor Ginzler, AARP's Director of Livable Communities, talks to Blueprint America about how Americans can live in suburbia as they age. Already, the suburbs are a tough place to get around. Getting older won’t make it any easier.

Last month, Blueprint America's colleagues at Need to Know debuted a new segment on the program: Fixing America.
This week, their big thinkers take on infrastructure and the economy -- can High-speed rail get America back on the right track? Guests include Petra Todorovich, director the America 2050; Felix Salmon, a financial blogger for Reuters; and Patricia DeGennaro, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

After making headlines for weeks, yesterday New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made it official: He's killing the commuter rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey. The project is too expensive, he says, and his state doesn't have the money to cover its share of the costs. The demise of the largest public works project in decades illustrates the stark political choice many voters will make next week: either spend our way out of the Recession with big projects like high-speed trains and tunnels or save our way out with good old fashioned belt-tightening.

As they post-mortem the housing crisis, policy makers are increasingly putting transportation costs under the microscope. Blueprint America visits the car -dependent suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, to learn about how transportation costs are making it harder for families to hold on to the American Dream.